Word.ws English Dictionary

down the pan

down the pan prepositional phrase: synonym of down the toilet: wasted; irretrievable.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (UK, idiomatic, slang) Synonym of down the toilet: wasted; irretrievable.
    Synonyms:
    down the toilet

Synonyms of down the pan

Origin of down the pan

From the former use of pan as a synonym of chamber pot.

Words formed from down the pan

Questions about down the pan

What does down the pan mean?
Down the pan means synonym of down the toilet: wasted; irretrievable.
What part of speech is down the pan?
Down the pan is a prepositional phrase.

Words near down the pan in the dictionary

  1. down the hatch
  2. down the house
  3. down the khazi
  4. down the line
  5. down the middle
  6. down the pan
  7. down the plughole
  8. down the road
  9. down the road, not across the street
  10. down the shitter
  11. down the toilet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: down the pan (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-down the pan.ogg.

Cite this entry: “down the pan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/down_the_pan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.